


Imaginary Lines

by merisunshine36



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merisunshine36/pseuds/merisunshine36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every morning before the rest of the world wakes up, Nolan goes for a run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imaginary Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pennythepants](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=pennythepants).



> Nolan has so many lovely muscles, does he not? I wanted to write about how he got them. :)

_Cambridge, MA  
1995_

Nolan balls up the rejection letter he just received and sends it sailing toward the wastebasket. It's his first, so he knows that he shouldn't take it personally, but still. He's an engineer; he's supposed to be able to shake a tree and have five offers fall into his lap. But there are 10,117 other Nolans at MIT, and a few more at Harvard, and Stanford, and all the other highly-ranked schools. There might even be a few rogue operators out in Kansas somewhere--you never know. What he _does_ know is that one of them stole this internship from him, and now he's back to square one.

The letter misses its target and lands on the floor next to a pair of dirty socks. He decides that it's fine there for now, and digs around beneath the piles of clothing inhabiting his dorm room floor until he finds his running shoes. Running is just one of the things that Nolan does, the same way he counts the steps every time he goes up a staircase and will only eat the dark meat part of a turkey. It's a central part of his Nolan-ness.

His shoes are a little battered and carry a faint odor of mildew from yesterday's slog through the rain. He wrinkles his nose at the smell, then shrugs and laces them up anyway.

*

Nolan balked at first when Ms. Rossi, his school's eighth-grade English teacher/track coach, suggested joining the cross country team. His classmates were already annoying, why would he want to spend _more_ time with them? Not to mention the injustice of having to wear those stupid shiny green shorts, being sweaty and sticky and gross all the time, and the extremely high probability of public embarrassment. But he also really liked Ms. Rossi, who let him write an essay on the use of the Cthulu in popular culture for their unit on research projects. And when she said that cross-country was the perfect sport for Nolan, and that it would mean a lot to her if he gave it a shot, well, he believed her.

The first couple of weeks were murder. After a mile his lungs would be crawling their way out of his chest, and more often than not he'd put his foot to the ground the wrong way and end up with a flare of pain shooting up his ankle. But he wouldn't be into computers in the first place if he didn't have a deep masochistic streak, and he wasn't going to let his own body fuck him over.

Nolan returned to school the next fall to find that Ms. Rossi was now Mrs. Stewart, and that she had moved to Colorado with Mr. Stewart. The new track coach took pity on him and offered to forward her a letter if Nolan wanted to write one. So he sat down at his desk with a blue pen and a piece of lined paper, and got as far as a series of jumbled thoughts on running and the computer he got for his birthday and how really liked both, and how he missed her. At that point Nolan decided that it sounded stupid, so he gave up on letter writing and went to find something to eat instead. Looking back, he wishes he'd sent it.

*

Every morning when most of his classmates have just passed out on top of their keyboards and the rest of the world is cursing their alarm clocks, Nolan pulls the nearest clean shirt over his head and goes for a run. He takes a winding path around the old buildings on campus, past the steady rumble of rush hour traffic on Mass Ave, by coffee shops and bleary-eyed construction workers and the steady current of the Charles.

He runs until the constant chatter that fills his mind fades into the background. He runs until his lungs threaten to burst each time he reaches for another breath, and sweat runs into his eyes. And right at the moment he gets lost in the feel of his feet hitting the pavement and the sound of his own heartbeat, is when he finds a way to feel comfortable inside his own skin.


End file.
